About this weblog

Here we'll explore the nexus of legal rulings, Capitol Hill
policy-making, technical standards development, and technological
innovation that creates -- and will recreate -- the networked world as we
know it. Among the topics we'll touch on: intellectual property
conflicts, technical architecture and innovation, the evolution of
copyright, private vs. public interests in Net policy-making, lobbying
and the law, and more.

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this weblog are those of the authors and not of their respective institutions.

June 17, 2005

Who Is He Talking About?

Rick Lambers @ CoCo blog provides links to MPAA head Dan Glickman's "P2P = = communism" speech (webcast; Word doc) plus a snippet: "[I]f you peruse the Internet, you can find advocates for a radical new movement that believes that all intellectual property should be commonly owned. These people think that copyright laws are too constraining and that the Internet should be seen as a 'global commons' with little regulation and no enforcement of intellectual property laws." Asks Rik, "Who is he talking about?"

All "intellectual property", for whatever meaning Glickman ascribes to it, is commonly owned. Publishers, pardon: artists, only have works on loan from the public.

It is amazing to see how somebody with so much disregard for the law as Glickman gets away with it. Do we really want to live in a world where people like Glickmann so openly get to advocate stealing our cultural heritage?